A bunch of women going street racing in Palestine shatters a million cultural mores. But convention be damned – these self-styled Speed Sisters are doing it for themselves.
The quiet of a Saturday night in Bethlehem, Palestine, is broken at 10 to midnight by the screech of wheels on tarmac. Betty Saadeh is speeding past the ancient Church of the Nativity in her red Golf GTI, perfectly manicured nails tipped with silver glitter gripping the wheel,
a pair of 6in heels at the pedals.
She’s wearing a figure-hugging black dress and has spent the afternoon in the salon having extensions added to her blonde hair: tonight she’s celebrating. The 32-year-old Christian mother of two became – officially – the fastest woman on the West Bank yesterday when she won the women’s championship in Palestine’s speed test series, driving the same Golf she’s now parking up in the city centre. It, too, has undergone
a transformation. This morning it was still a shell, metal innards exposed as the interior was stripped of all but its bucket racing seat. But Betty’s mechanic, Maher, restored it to normality this afternoon and now the only signs of yesterday’s action are the remains of the racing stickers that covered the exterior. One on the passenger window displays, in large orange letters, the name of Palestine’s first and only female race team: the Speed Sisters.
Betty’s with team-mate Noor Daoud, a striking, sports-obsessed 22-year-old who drives a blacked-out BMW, and as the pair enter a nightclub in the basement of the grand Jacir Palace Hotel they turn heads. “Did you see the article in the paper today?” Betty shouts over her shoulder to Noor, her words almost lost to the US hip-hop blaring from the speakers. “It said, ‘Betty: Queen of cars!’ My mechanic told me the guys were all watching my laps asking, ‘Did she beat us? Did she beat us?’”
“You beat so many guys!” Noor shouts back with a grin as she signals to the barman.
The women are two members of a six-strong team changing the face of motorsport in traditionally conservative Palestine. They compete on an equal level with men at races held around the West Bank, in front of thousands, shredding stereotypes in their tyre tracks. With both Christian and Muslim members and an age range of 20 to 35, the Speed Sisters are a group of women united by a hunger to race. In the land-locked Palestinian territories where space is at a premium and there’s an absence of long stretches of checkpoint-free road, racers have to find suitable areas where they can – a disused helipad in Bethlehem, a closed marketplace in Jenin – to compete in speed tests on obstacle courses.
Read the full story in February's issue of The Red Bulletin.
Comments
Add a comment